YouTube Priest: Hip Hop video goes viral

Courtesy the Spirit Juice Studios
The Rev. Claude Burns, parish priest at Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Evansville, filmed his YouTube video in Chicago as a response to an earlier video entitled "Why I Hate Religion but Love Jesus."

Courtesy the Rev. Claude Burns
THe Rev. Claude Burns videotaped his YouTube video inside the Queen of All Saints Basilica in Chicago.

The cover of The Rev. Claude Burn's Cd "Ordained"

photos Courtesy the Rev. Claude Burns
The Rev. Claude Burns worked with Spirit Juice Studios (www.spiritjuicestudios.com) to film his YouTube video "Why I Love Religion, And Love Jesus," inside the Queen of All Saints Basilica in Chicago in five hours one day.

He is comfortable being called a "hip-hop priest."

At 39, the Rev. Claude "Dusty" Burns has evolved from being a simple parish priest — at Holy Spirit Catholic Church on Evansville's southeast side — to something of an Internet phenomenon.

His YouTube video, "Why I Love Religion and Love Jesus," has made him famous far outside the confines of the Diocese of Evansville.

It started last month, Jan. 11 to be exact, when self-avowed Christian hip-hop artist Jeffrey Bethke, who hails from Washington State, launched a YouTube video entitled, "Why I Hate Religion but Love Jesus."

The website www.youtube.com allows pretty much anyone to post anything in a public forum.

In the parlance of the Internet, Bethke's video "went viral," logging more than 18 million "hits" from around the globe in less than a month.

While Bethke does make some salient points in his video — Burns said so himself — the young priest reacted: "His video takes some jabs at the church (that) begged for a response."

Burns' video, "Why I Love Religion and Love Jesus," which he describes as a "hybrid of poetry and hip-hop," was produced by Spirit Juice Studios in Chicago and launched Jan. 19.

"What if I told you that Jesus loves religion," Burns says in his video. "What makes religion great ... is that broken men and women get to participate in his mission. ... When Jesus said 'It is finished,' his religion had just begun.'"

The video received more than 100,000 hits in the first 24 hours, Burns said.

"It was like getting a standing ovation."

There has been much action and even more talk among Catholic leadership in recent years about making the church relevant in the 21st century, Burns said.

"Pope John Paul II talked about the "new evangelism," using technology the media to extend ourselves outside the walls (of the church). It's a national — a global — trend," he said. "We have to dialogue with the world in its arena."

Toward that end, Burns has been spiritual adviser since 2002 to an organization called Phatmass (visit www.phatmass.com), he said, explaining that the word "phat" carries two meanings: "(Colloquially) it means awesome or cool but it also is (an acronym for) Preaching Holy Apostolic Truth (to and for us) Phatmass is on the cutting-edge of Catholic media."

With Phatmass, he started writing — and performing — Christian rap again, adopting the stage name "Father Pontifex," a name by which he said many of the students and staff at Holy Spirit School also know him.

It was through his affiliation with Phatmass that Burns got to know some of the people at Spirit Juice Studios (www.spiritjuicestudios.com), a 5-year-old up-and-coming Catholic production company based in Chicago, he said.

Spirit Juice recorded his first CD, "Ordained" in 2011, he said, explaining the material on it is "autobiographical."

Last month he was asked by Spirit Juice to do a Christian/Catholic video in direct response to the Bethke piece.

"It's more a hybrid of hip-hop and street poetry," he said, "It has lots of scripture; it's theology with a pulse.

"I wrote it overnight emailed (my final draft) to (Bishop Charles Thompson) and asked if it was OK. He said it sounded good and that I should 'be safe out there.'"

"We filmed it all at once, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. nonstop; and it's only about three minutes long."

The production company used the interior of Queen of All Saints Basilica in Chicago as a backdrop, he added.

At last count, Burns' video had been viewed close to 400,000 times, making it one of the most popular responses to Bethke's original. A multitude of responses have cropped up on YouTube since Jan. 11.

And Spirit Juice has asked him to come back: "Right now I am planning to do about one new video every month for the next year," he said.

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More info

To watch The Rev. Burns' video, "Why I Love Religion and Love Jesus," go to www.youtube.com and type the title into the search box (the original video and all its permutations also will come up).

To learn more about Phatmass, visit www.phatmass.com

To learn more about Spirit Juice Productions, visit www.spiritjuicestudios.com

Burns' CD, "Ordained" ($10) currently is available at Holy Spirit Catholic Church, 1760 Lodge Ave. in Evansville (where proceeds go toward support of the school); from the Phatmass website; and as an MP3 download ($9) from Amazon.com

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(Excerpts from "Why I Love Religion and Love Jesus")

"We all detest hypocrisy, and empty show is just the worst; but blaming religion for contradiction is like staring at death and blaming the hearse."

"Those who choose to sit in the pews and refuse the good news are not the fault of religion."

"His religion is the largest worldwide source for relief."

"You can't have Christ without his church, you can't have a king without his kingdom."

"I believe when Jesus said: ‘It is finished,' his religion had just begun."